Healthy people suddenly got fevers, redness & inflammation of the eyes, insides, throat & tongues, sometimes bleeding & with a terrible smell. Before it had arrived, there had been seeming no sickness & it appears to have come out from nowhere.Some said that the Peloponnesians poisoned their water supply but there were no wells in Piraeus. Suddenly it showed up in Piraeus & then in Athens. The plague is said to have come from Ethiopia, made its way through Egypt & Libya.Supplications & divinations didn’t work either. Doctors were of no use as they didn’t know how to deal with it & often they got sick themselves from tending to the sick. This plague was like no other that anyone else had heard of. It’s said that it had come in from Lemnos. Just as this force began the invasion, a plague struck Athens. The next summer, the Spartans & allies sent 2/3 of their forces to invade Attica under Archidamus.Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2, Chapter 7 – Second Year of the War-The Plague of Athens-Position and Policy of Pericles-Fall of Potidaea
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